MOTOGP 13
Developed by Milestone
Available on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 from Amazon
If you watch the high-speed action week-in, week-out during the Motorcycle Grand Prix season, then you’ll probably dream of riding those very tracks yourself. Now you can as your favourite MotoGP rider in the MotoGP 13 game.
With single race, championship modes, time attack, multiplayer and career modes, there are quite a few options to choose from.
Single race allows you to choose an existing rider from the Moto3, Moto2 and MotoGP divisions and ride around a circuit of your choice. Some of the riders will be locked, as you have to play career mode to unlock them.
Championship mode is much like single race except you start from the beginning of a championship with your rider and need to complete all 17 races of the season.
Time attack allows you to choose an existing rider or a custom one and a track of your choice to lay down some fast laps. Your lap times will be recorded and uploaded to the online leaderboard. In previous versions of the MotoGP game, they’d have a ghost on the track which you could try to beat, but unfortunately MotoGP 13 doesn’t feature a ghost. So when you’ve set a mega fast lap and are trying to beat it, you really don’t have any idea how you are comparing except for the odd bit of split info that pops up at different sections of the track.
Multiplayer is exactly what it says on the tin: you can race online with other people. The problem is that the servers are pretty dead and if you do get into a race, the chances of finding newbie/entry-level races is pretty non-existant. Most people online love to race on difficult mode with no assists so it’s much more like a simulator, so if you’re one that casually plays MotoGP 13 and your racing isn’t exactly the best, then you’ll find completing a race, never mind winning one, a tad difficult. My recent experiences with online too are that it’s unreliable and you may find the servers are down or you cannot connect to them. As the game is pretty old now, I’m wondering if they’ve stopped support and servers for this game, but it may be just a blip. I don’t play much multiplayer so I’m not completely sure, but if you’re looking to buy this game solely for that purpose, be warned of the above issues. For those that prefer to play with a friend on the same screen, there’s a local multiplayer mode called Split Screen that can be selected.
The main mode and major draw of the game is Career mode. Starting in Moto3 as a custom rider, you have to work your way up from being a wild card to a team rider, rising through the ranks and teams to eventually become MotoGP world champion.
As a custom rider, you’ll get to choose your name, nickname, racing number, helmet and colours to make your unique mark on the track. From therein, it’s up to you, kid!
You’ll be assigned a manager who’ll look to set you up with other teams as you progress. Each race you’ll be given a rider to beat on track and a position to aim for. You can change the target rider in the options if you so wish. Beat these, and you’ll rise the ranks, gain interest from other, better teams and increase your fanbase. Like all the current MotoGP riders, you’ll have your own social media where riders and fans will interact with you. You cannot write anything back but it’s nice to see what’s being said as you progress. There’s even a magazine that might list your name now and again if you do big things like win races.
When it comes to racing, you’re presented with a full race weekend: practice, qualifying and race day. It’s up to you if you want to do them all or just some. You can choose just qualifying and race day, or just race day, but if you miss out qualifying you will start off in last place on the grid so it’s always better playing through qualifying.
As we all know, the full race can be anywhere from 20 to 30 laps, or thereabouts, which is a heck of a lot of time to commit to a game. If you haven’t that kind of time and want to get through the races quicker, you can choose to shorten them. You can even shorten it so that a race lasts just 3 laps. Once set for the weekend though, you cannot change it until the next race weekend.
Out on the track, the weather has an impact on your riding as well as the different tracks. A standard set-up might not always suit. Fortunately, you have a technician in the pit who you can talk to and who’ll help you to find a suitable set-up for your bike. If you’re already familiar with bike set-ups and how they work, you can do these changes manually using the machine in the pit, but if you’re unfamiliar but know what sort of problems you’re experiencing (too fast in corners, not enough grip on straights, etc), then you can explain this to the technician who’ll make the required changes to try and solve to the problem for you. Take the bike for a spin and if you’re still not happy, continue to alter the set-up of the bike or change it back to the original settings. All these changes take time, so if you’ve got 30 minutes and a change takes 10 minutes (the labour time will always be stated by the technician), then you’ll have 20 minutes to then try the changes out. This is a great addition to the game and allows you to play with the settings to find a better set-up without having to have a degree in motorcycle mechanics.
When you’re ready to race, just head on out of the pits where you’ll be situated on the grid. The warm-up lap is auto whilst the screen runs through the grid positions. You’ll find yourself watching the lights, ready to open the throttle and accelerate towards the first corner, which, like most MotoGP races, is always packed and almost always sees riders colliding if not falling off. The thrill of chasing down those famous names and overtaking them is amazing, especially when it becomes a hard battle towards the finish line. A little too much gas in the wrong spot could prove the difference between winning and losing a race, so it’s important to stay focused. If you do crash though or make a mistake, there’s a rewind facility that allows you to rewind back the race a few seconds to a chosen point. Depending on your difficulty setting, you will get a certain number of rewind chances, with less rewinds with higher difficulty settings.
Gamers who like to recreate the feeling of being on a bike can change the camera angle to helmet or dashboard cam, or alternatively you can play as the default third person, which is my preferred angle.
Should you come first, second or third, you’ll find yourself in Parc Ferme where you’ll celebrate with your team. Gavin Emmett provides commentary throughout the game and at this point will speak about your achievements. The entire section of this is automated, so just enjoy the celebrations.
After each race, you will see your position in the race, your position in the overall leaderboard and how many fans you’ve recruited. The higher the position, the more fans you’ll get which will add towards your XP levels. As these XP levels increase, you’ll unlock bonus videos, helmets and riders.
Throughout the game, there’s customisable options to make your racing that much easier or harder. You can choose to set the weather or have it dynamic so it can change at any point, have the option of burning rubber so tyres wear through use, have the option of developing engine problems and crash damage, show or hide trajectory, automatically or manually shift through the gears and auto or manually tuck in on corners. There’s plenty of settings to get your teeth into to change to make an easier game harder once you’ve got to grips with it and improve.
MotoGP 13 is a fun game but not a perfect one. Whilst multi-player is the main issue, time attack could be improved and I’d still like to see some extra interaction in the Career mode though the additions they’ve made with Parc Ferme, the Pit, the social media and the email messages really do make the player feel more involved and a valued part of the championship. Being able to do a victory lap and stand on the podium for the national anthem would be incredible and on the flip side, ride-through penalties would make the game that much more realistic. Improved engine sounds are a must too and are a gripe with a lot of the fans of the series, but it doesn’t really affect the gameplay that much in my eyes. Something which Milestone have done wonderfully is recreating the tracks. After watching the British MotoGP race at Silverstone and then playing the track in MotoGP 13, I can safely say it looks pretty much spot on and is a thrill to relive but this time as a rider 😉 Hopefully with the next instalment, they’ll improve the graphics so it can become even more realistic.
After I decided to skip the MotoGP 14 game, I look forward to see what developments the MotoGP 15 game brings.
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